association comments-o-matic » Effective Database

Comment on Are your lousy systems affecting staff retention? by Daniel Shanahan

comments-o-matic — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 20:30:06 +0000

Wes, I had never considered how an effective, up-to-date database might effect employee retention and the related cost to loosing/hiring someone. Great post!

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Comment on Measuring Member Engagement – The AMS Vendors Are Starting to Get It by Shelly Giordano

comments-o-matic — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 19:40:10 +0000

Wild Apricot is a viable option for 1-6 staff. One database/ one vendor is what I recommend for this staff size. We were in an environment where one vendor was blaming another and we were happy to get out of that environment.The less than 10 staff is the most over served market in the association space so it takes time to select the right vendor. I guess that’s a good problem to have.

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Comment on Measuring Member Engagement – The AMS Vendors Are Starting to Get It by Megan Drendrea

comments-o-matic — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 01:00:08 +0000

Great blog Wes, Ken I agree with you regarding one vendor one and one datbase for 1-10 staff size. You might want to consider Timberlake and Computility to. They are an all in one solution as well.

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Comment on Measuring Member Engagement – The AMS Vendors Are Starting to Get It by Ken Johnson

comments-o-matic — Sat, 02 Apr 2011 18:40:05 +0000

Social media is now mandatory for AMS vendors who are selling into the 1-10 staff size. Avectra, Memberclicks, and Your Membership have offer both an AMS, CMS, and Social Media all in one.

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Comment on Measuring Member Engagement – The AMS Vendors Are Starting to Get It by Tom Morrison

comments-o-matic — Sat, 02 Apr 2011 14:00:08 +0000

Social networking is very important in the engagement assessment and equation because it gives the smallest member in the most remote location the same chance to participate as those members who have the budgets to travel and seem involved because they are seen at meetings.

I find there are many members who are more active online in industry discussions and connecting with others than those at live meetings. Without social networking, you are really only providing the greatest value to those who can spend the money to attend meetings.

The power of social networking is it provides for 100% of your membership to participate and get involved.

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Comment on Measuring Member Engagement – The AMS Vendors Are Starting to Get It by Wes Trochlil

comments-o-matic — Sat, 02 Apr 2011 14:00:08 +0000

No argument, Tom. But if an assn’s only option for engagement is face-to-face meetings, that assn needs to rethink their engagement channels. For example, writing for an assn should not require any travel or budget. And very often committee service can be done via teleconference. My point is that social networking isn’t the only way to address those “hard to reach” members.

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Comment on Measuring Member Engagement – The AMS Vendors Are Starting to Get It by David Sieg

comments-o-matic — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 19:20:06 +0000

Thanks for touching on such an timely topic.

Today, it’s so important to address two key sides to the complete association management system: delivering value to members (via social networking) and gaining enhanced operational efficiencies (AMS). And these two are more intricately linked than ever before. Social networking/online communities are most beneficial when they feed KPIs like member profile data, social networking activities, financial transaction histories, event attendance data, etc. directly and seamlessly into a centralize AMS database. This, in turn, allows users/admins to view the overall health of their private social networks, conduct email marketing to targeted member segments, run customized reports and more. We call it ’social networking with a purpose!’ (PROMO WARNING!) YourMembership.com created a 1-minute video that addresses this very concept: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yI2Q19xctGw

Thanks again for highlighting the importance of social networking plus membership management solutions.

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Comment on Measuring Member Engagement – The AMS Vendors Are Starting to Get It by Wes Trochlil

comments-o-matic — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 19:20:06 +0000

David, thanks for the comment. I believe an AMS can deliver value to members withOUT a social networking element, but having said that, including the social piece as part of the overall KPIs makes a lot of sense.

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Comment on Are you de-duping your lists? by Wes Trochlil

comments-o-matic — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 22:10:05 +0000

Agreed, each organization needs to weight the ROI on de-duping lists.
Success, not perfection.

But in this particular example, de-duping would have been incredibly easy and relatively inexpensive. To add insult to injury, I received a FOURTH solicitation two days after these three arrived!

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Comment on Are you de-duping your lists? by David M. Patt, CAE

comments-o-matic — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 19:50:07 +0000

I worked for an association that merged event registrants from other organizations into its database. Most of those folks were non-members whom we only mailed to once each year.

Quite a few used different variations of their names when registering for each event – e.g. Janet, Jane, Janie. And many of them moved frequently, so the computer could not tell if they were duplicates.

A lot of names remained following a list purge and we had to view those manually and individually. Still, we could not always determine if they were dups.

And it really wasn’t worth the time and money to get rid of them all. In many zip codes, in fact, a non-member who received a piece addressed to someone else may have been just as likely to sign up for an event as the person to whom the mail was intended.

So, some of your members may think you don’t look organized by sending duplicate mailings. But it’s not always cost effective to purge the list.

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